Hero in progress

@Rilles Have you got any ideas about how to do that? Because it seems hopeless, its on such a large scale and this is big business for people, and peoples livelihood and people tend not to react very well when you try and mess with there survival. It would take everyone to make this change and people just won't do. I guess I could work on trying to create some sort sanctuary for animals like a farm that has the purpose of caring for animals instead of butchering them, but again that takes a lot of money. And even you if could do that its still on such a small scale maybe 100 animals and what's that compared to the billions of animals that are killed for human consumption on a yearly basis. Maybe a more effective way to go about that is to assist in transforming the human Psyche to a point were eating animals is no longer an option, but again that requires a complete transformation in myself first which is no easy feat, that would take a lifetime of disciplined work and then you have the issue of trying to help others which would be just as hard. Look at krishnamurti he spent his whole life trying to do just that and failed, not long before he died he felt great sadness about it all that it never made a difference. People just don't care enough, there consciousness is so involed with there own survival and agenda, this is the self minds job. To quote krishnamurti " there's no sanity in the world" @Rilles

@Shin I identified my self with the poor animals and disidentified myself with the humans that eat them. The embarrassment is akin to something like when your on a night out and your drunk and make a fool of yourself and the next morning your like "oh shit" what did I say/do last night and then its regretted. Well I was drunk on pain & sadness earlier, but that's subsided now. Now I'm thinking abit more clearly about it, and realise me reacting and expressing it on this forum doesn't do shit, it doesn't solve anything at all. If I could take the post down I would.

I wana apologize for this post, I was quite hysterical earlier, I was crying while writing the whole thing, and it was basically a pain body reaction on my part. But as you know emotions, moods, attitudes change like the weather. I am in a more calm & collected state now and as a result I feel abit embarrassed about it. The number was so huge and deeply thinking about it got me into a sort state of fuck the human race sort of thing. I'm sorry.

@Mezanti @Mezanti We'll firstly there is no1 here more spiritually advanced than you, I am addicted to cigarettes, I can lose my temper, i have negative thoughts sometimes and I suffer the experience of self survival just like everyone else. That's the truth. But... The one that knows all that, but does not know or perceive itself is formless and infinite and I don't mean that to sound so romantic its just what's absolutely so.

@Mezanti Self survival is properly a more appropriate term than ego. There is no ego.... Opps did I just give it away Your post is great really, it addresses self survival. Social self survival, which to survival is just as important & attention grabbing as a physical threat. We live a vast complex social context, this dominates our thinking proccess, and actually if you really wana go deep, its all a complete fucking illusion. Theres no1 here!!! Hello? Anyone out there?? No1 wrote this post, even if you think off course someone wrote this another ego... Tut tut tut... Your still not getting it. Mindfuck

@LiakosN 1. What pain do you feel on a regular basis, were is it located? What does it feel like? 2. "I'm so critical about everything" So this is a observation you have made about your experience, first of all don't be so quick to completely identify with this perception. Identify simply means, you see something and take it to be you! Stop doing that. I invite to contemplate and consider why this occurs? It might be case that your perceptive faculties - eyes, ears, feelings ect. Are fused with your mind. As a result everything is instantaneously categorized into - good and bad, right and wrong, useful - a threat. It might be the case that your self perception is creating the positive & negative charge about everything that's perceived. And this pure brilliance is all in the name of self survival. Its a very complex and intricate affair. See if today you can start to become conscious that everything has a effect on you - either positive or negative. If you do start to experience that on a more and more subtle level, then maybe you are also open to questioning why that occurred and for what purpose. Our Self perception need not be accurate, its main purpose is to categorize everything into terms of what it means "To Me" Me and my agenda, me and my needs, me and my survival. This Self perception is one of main reasons why enlightenment "seems" obscure. This perception is not only habitual and all you know, its a strong drive inside you, because your own survival is on the line. But it is possible to completely transcend it. That's the good news. The very sense of you behind the eyes, looking at the screen right now is exactly what's been pointed out.

@egoless Leo has a video on his channel called "how I do research & develop big picture understanding" I think that's what your looking for.

@Patang I send my deepest love for you. Go all the way, you can do it, your love is deep enough to move stars. All my best wishes.

@onacloudynight Well I'll indulge you My friend It's a interesting question to ponder. first of all you would need to find a place that would have caves. There's places were yogis have been doing it throughout history in India. That would be something you would have to research further ( places to go? ) As far as food is concerned if you was out in the wild you could learn how to hunt your own food, or local food sources. You could stock up on rice or something like that, that's a further thing to research. Toilet would have to be outside in nature in a hole or you could shit in a bucket in your cave. You could have blankets to make it comfortable and keep warm and you could even have a fire. As far as bugs are concerned I think they would be the least of your challenges there. You could always find a friend who is up for it as well and you support each other. You would need tremendous discipline, and it would be far beyond easy. But its not impossible and not unheard of to do it. If you got Netflix look up yogis there's a few documentary's of these yogis living life like that, it may offer some further insight into that way of life. Good luck. Maybe do a few trial runs first to get a taste for it, before full commitment.

@Thanatos13 Maybe I can offer some insight & further consideration. The ego as a solid entity is a complete illusion, that's to say the sense of being a isolated object residing within the body, situated behind the eyes, between the ears is none other than a figment of mind. Its something that was created when you was very young. You was called to be a person to survive in a social context, in fact if you look into at all you will see that self & other are inseparable, meaning without other there's no you. So you ask "why do anything at all" Well the thing is although there may not be a real entity harbouring a existence of its own, there is ego energy in the body, this is a heavy turbid energy residing below the navel. If you don't transend the ego and surrender too God, you will never be free of this heavy energy, and ultimately you will never be at complete peace. Also there is inherent suffering in self survival. You will live the rest of your life trapped in your own restricted world's of meaning and projection. And secondly if you don't transcend the ego you will go through life a bit selfish, serving only your own self agenda and as far as I can tell, that's not a very nice and happy life too live. Ultimately its all up to you, In the grand scheme of things whether you choose to pursue Divine consciousness or not it doesn't make any difference to the infinite cosmos. But.. It would make a huge difference for your life and maybe the people around you. And finally if humanity meaning YOU doesn't get on board with becoming more deeply conscious and present, chances are, were fucking dead.

@molosku Thanks for sharing.

@makouda The first thing that will supercharge your contemplation skills is not knowing, that is the first principle. Not knowing has a bad connotation and this is likely to be culturally influenced. For example when I was in school when I was a kid, I remember actually getting anxious about the teacher asking me a question at random, and would feel relieved when they would single some else out. I feared that all the eyes in the room would stare at me as I say those dreaded words... "I don't know" Maybe you could relate to that in your own experience when you was young. I can see in myself at that time that the idea of not knowing was something I probably drove hard to get away from. Even if my "inherent" not knowing was only covered over with adopted and programmed beliefs, that didn't matter because my job as a self was not to get what's true, but rather find out how to relate to others socially and manage that. Imagine this possibility... You wake up tomorrow and you are charged with a fierce curiosity! Suddenly life has become one big open question mark (?) From this place of standing on nothing you are free to start asking questions that you have never asked in your life. You come out your room and as you do you stub your toe on the bed. The normal reaction to that is noticed, but instead of stopping there you ask... What is pain? You seek to get past your minds automatic interpretation of what pain is and start to look at the actual experience directly, it becomes a open question. You then get ready to go out of your house as you step out the door you perceive a dangerous looking person, you then have a negatively charged feeling arise in your body, what we normally call an emotion. You then start to ask what is that? Why does that arise, am I creating it? Or is it inflicted? For what purpose would I be creating that for? The feeling then "moves" or motivates you to walk the other way, as you start walking down the road, you start to engage in a inner dialogue with yourself. Then that becomes the question - what is the inner dialogue? Who is it aimed at? Why does it exsit? How did it come about that human beings have a inner dialogue? Imagine the consciousness one would have, the subtle distinctions and details of life that you would create. You would experience life like no other human being does. if you approached life as a constant question you would eventually become conscious of shit so inconceivable to you at this moment it would blow your mind. Interesting possibility isn't is?

@OneLittleHumanMindI If u look into your conscious experience that is made up of thoughts, emotions and perceptions. You will see that although the self "appears" to be a isolated and separate entity harbouring a existence all on its own, a second look may well reveal that the self experience is entirely depentant on other. Not only to know were it sits in relation to others but also to exist! Peter Ralston gave the analogy that by drawing a circle simultaneously you create the inside of the circle and the outside. By defining self you also define not self. Now there is nothing wrong with intimate relationships and by becoming more conscious in a social context you may well find yourself being able to be much more effective, honest, authentic and genuine in your relationships. Without needing to manipulate others minds in seeing you the way you desire or giving a front or adopting a inauthentic persona. After investigation it becomes clear that as a self in a social context we tend to be dishonest in some areas, hide aspects of ourselves or promote the perceived strengths of oneself to get approval. This may seem like a fruitful endeavor at first glance but is actually a prison. Because we are social animals a large part of ours energies go into obsessing over other peoples perception of us. Whether we care to admit it or not our "collective mind" is very much concerned with others "view" of us. This of course relates to our social survival and is a strong force but not impossible to transend. Comparing, contrasting and competing are a part of this social context in our culture. And so collective ways of thinking, values, beliefs and assumptions are as if inherited from the moment we start being raised in this world. That's why we need to question everything from scratch in order to start to make sense of this reality in a accurate way. What do u think?

This post I'm calling " open contemplation " It's a chance to make this forum less about telling each other about how things are, and more about some deep collective introspection right now. So anyone is welcome to comment. The aim of this is something similar to a consciousness workshop. Where a group of people get together and start questioning there own experience. This is for people who have the intelligence to realise that they are deeply ignorant and do not know! And from there we have the space to actually look. If there is a specific experience or distinction you want to look into here I am happy to contamplate with you here and see if we can both come to some sort of genuine insight or realisation together. If you want to get involved but don't have anything in particular that you want to contemplate here, then have a look at the suggestions for topics of contemplation below. This post may be your chance to actually contemplate for yourself, in your own experience, without any authority from anyone. Your shooting for direct evidence. Buddha can't help you here, Jesus can't save you now. YOU contemplate, YOU desern YOU find for yourself what's true. To help people to be more effective in there contemplations I have outlined some guiding principles. Pre contemplation components 1. Presence: Put your attention on the present moment. 2. Clarity: clarify what you are going to contemplate. 3. Possibility: hold that it is possible to become conscious of whatever it is you are contemplating. contemplation components: Intention: intend, right now, to become conscious of the truth. openess: Allow yourself to deeply not know, and be open to whatever may be true. Focus: keep all your attention on your subject; when you wander off, immediately bring your attention back. Question: Truly wonder; keep a steady questioning that's related to your intent. So let's get started suggested topics of contemplation- what is a distinction? What is self? what are emotions, why do they exist? For what purpose? what is self image? what is thinking? What is separation? How does space exist in your self experience? how are you stuck in time? What does it mean to be timeless? fear & desire? what is authority? what is a person? what is culture? What assumptions, beliefs and ideas has culture got? and so on.

@Joseph Maynor @Dodo You guys can get involved into these contemplations we are having if you want, I know you two did have some valid things to say before.

@OneLittleHumanMind You brought up some interesting points. 1. The self-mind is always future oriented, its function seems to be a constant projecting into possible threat or dissolution. I can spot this in my self as well. 2. The fusion between imagination and perception (example- conceptual image of moving face, body ect) it may be the case that in a social world we need these kind of subjective feedback images to inform us during our interactions with others. If we didn't have some sort of feedback about when we smile, frown, and all the subtle facial cues that are valid during our social interactions we wouldn't be able to interact as effectively? Really all the self images and subjective feedback can all be boiled down to the term "self conscious" ever noticed when your deeply ingrossed in a entertaining movie not much of that feedback is obvious, now contrast that with walking into a room full of strangers looking at you and the "Self consciousness" is abundant! Interesting. What do you want to enquire into next?

@OneLittleHumanMind @OneLittleHumanMind If we look at survival as a principle. And understand that by necessity all organisms from simple to complex have the drive to survive & persist. And that your emotions, social concerns and management and so on are all in service to this purpose. If you could look at life like its a game, you see that its a open world full of infinite possibilities. But beyond that consideration, also consider that nature although beautiful and awe inspiring, is dangerous and full of potential threat. Consider that your mind has developed in such a way that your very perception itself is not a true reflection of reality but is in service to your survival and needs. And that your mind is a information processing machine. And is the way in which you know the world. Consider also that your very perception right now is what I am talking about. That perception itself is in service to the one you are and your needs. But that may be difficult to become conscious of. Would need further contemplation. Consider also that what you experience as yourself is a distinction, that the very feeling/ image sense you have of yourself is conceptual in nature. And that its possible to go beyond this by first becoming aware of it. If you move your lips, raise your eyebrows, turn your head can you spot that when you do these activities you also have the sense of you doing them, almost like a movie of you doing these activities, although intimate and familiar can you desern that they are conceptual? Its almost like your mind has the quality of reflecting your faceback at you. And gives you a sense of what your face looks like when you do these movements, take a look. That's the distinction Self I am referring too. Hence no mind no self.

@OneLittleHumanMind I would like you to consider that I feel no sense of separatness "AT ALL" with you. That in some inconceivable way right now I am in the very same place as you right now! If thats the case then really grasp the magnitude of what I am saying! Like yeah its that crazy! Your sense of separation is because you experience yourself as a entity and so do I, BUT this very experience it needs to be understood and very carefully considered. The self, by its very nature is a isolated phenomenon. Living inside its own internal walls, separate, isolated and self oriented. That's its job, it runs on the principle of survival and that's another thing we should into, what is survival??? Let's really look into this together As if for the first time right now. Let's really get into it for real now.

@OneLittleHumanMind I like your approach, what would you like to contemplate?

@Dodo @Joseph Maynor Thankyou for your contributions. And my apologies to the few who bookmarked this post, indicating that they too were interested in the "open contemplations" post. But after logging on I feel that the post has already been contaminated by other peoples projections, so I will leave it there. I was hoping for a more direct, specific, and constructive questioning. But instead I am getting told I am lonely, and this is nothing more than mental masterbation. Joseph I would say to your question that absolute truth is beyond meaning, language and thought. And that if meaning, language, thought was to all be eliminated from reality the truth would still be the truth. Truth is inherent in the thing itself, that why its different from opinions, beliefs, words. If you wana carry this topic on another time feel free to message me. Cheers. Dodo, it seems your having a pretty tough time with it at the moment, if you want to talk about it further, feel free to message me sometime and we can look into the stuff your going through. Cheers

@Empty try it and find out, could be useless for you or it could assist you! Only you can find out for yourself. Don't except anyone elses authority, because they might not know either. But one thing you can be sure of, everyone is a philosopher of some sort. YOU find out yourself.

Gautama Siddhartha ( Buddha ) Jesus Christ Huinyeng Bodhidharma Sadhguru The supreme zen masters- Soooo...

MYSTICS & SAGES Creating a list of the mystics you know & love would be beneficial for everyone who is interested in studying these fascinating human beings further. It would be great if you could contribute any to this post, and perhaps help people find Masters that they may not be exposed to otherwise. I will start it off with the first 10. 1. Sri Ramakrishna 2. Thomas Merton 3. Meister Eckhart 4. Chuang tzu 5. Dogen 6. Lieh ztu 7. Jiddu krishnamurti 8. Peter Ralston 9. Eckhart tolle 10. Shunyamurti Any others that you can list are more than welcome, the less heard of they are the better!

11. Osho 12. George gurdjieff 13. Rumi 14. Adyashanti 15. Ramana Maharashi 16. Mahavira 17. Lao tzu 18. Nisargadatta maharaj 19. Mooji 20. Rupert spira Also there is a hardcore yogi! "Govind lama" The mountain yogi. There is a documentry about him called the mountain yogi Govind lama. Write it into youtube to watch it if you want. He is truely enlightened!

@electroBeam I recommend reading both translations. The technique explained in much detail in these books will guide you in circulation of the light. It will help you.